Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demurred Tuesday when questioned concerning the US navy’s potential to strike the suspected Iranian nuclear facility beneath Pickaxe Mountain, a topic that has gained consideration primarily based on experiences that Iran might have moved centrifuges and uranium into the advanced.
The Pickaxe Mountain web site is close to Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility within the nation’s rugged inside. Analysts and intelligence companies consider the positioning to be even deeper underground than the amenities struck by the US throughout Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025.
In latest weeks, President Donald Trump has highlighted Pickaxe Mountain as a possible bombing goal. “We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily,” Trump stated Tuesday.
Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved a part of its enriched uranium stockpile and superior enrichment centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain, in response to an Israeli supply acquainted with the matter. Finding and eradicating Iran’s almost 1,000 kilos of extremely enriched uranium stays one of many high targets for the US and Israel.
Nonproliferation professional Andrea Stricker informed NCS that Trump “should act to disable Pickaxe Mountain and prevent Iran from finishing the site, reconstituting an enrichment or nuclear weapons option, and having access to thousands of centrifuges that represent the remnants of its nuclear program.”
Some specialists are skeptical of the impression that US strikes might have on the deeply buried web site.
James Acton, who co-leads the Carnegie Endowment’s nuclear coverage work, posted on X that he doubts the US can do a lot more than collapse entry tunnels on the Pickaxe Mountain facility.
“That isn’t a game changer,” Acton said.